Tag: female-characteristics

  • Female Traits – The Key to High Workplace Performance

    I haven’t written any blogs lately because I’ve been consolidating all of my ideas into a book.  It turned out to be more involved and comprehensive than I expected.  Now that I am in the editing stages, I am focusing on a central theme – How women’s natural traits are the key to achieving high performance in the workplace.

    This is a message we seldom hear.

    Instead society is still caught up in the stereotypes and the idea that men excel in business – the way men do business is the way business should be done.  But as I say in my book my first impression of the male-dominated workplace was pretty much “What the Hell?”  I saw chaos and crisis management all around me.

    I knew I could better and I did.  And the reason I did better was because I used my female traits.  I am very proud to say that I always outperformed my male colleagues.  I say this, not to brag, but so women know – Our traits bring tremendous value to the workplace!  Any workplace that balances male and female traits will outperform a workplace that only uses male traits.

    And what is so amazing, is that when we start using our traits, performance soars immediately.

    As some of you know I worked in an extremely male-dominated environment.  When I started, the workplace was on course to lose $7 million.  In 10 months, we were turning a nice profit of $3.2 million.

    How did I achieve such a miraculous recovery?

    I empowered all the women to use their female traits.

    Of course I know my profession extremely well and that is important.  But after trying to work through my all-male management team for three months and getting nowhere, I switched my attention to working through the women.

    The women who were project engineers, project coordinators and project administrators became the leaders.  The women led my male managers.

    No one can tell me that female traits are not powerful. Been there, used them, got the results!

    So, all of this advice that tells us that to be successful in the workplace we have to act like men, needs to go away.  It is time for society to accept that women hold up half the sky.  We bring our own unique traits to the workplace and add to what the men are already doing.  When men and women work in balance with each other, then we hold up the entire sky.

    As I’ve written my book I refined my list of male and female balancing traits.  Why my book is taking me so much longer than I expected is because I am discovering how all traits interact with each other.  It is not just about each set of traits balancing each other but a group of female traits working to balance a group of male traits.  It is really pretty amazing.  And I am in awe of how powerful women really are.

     

    Male
    Female
    BLUE ZONE
    PURPLE ZONE
    PINK ZONE

    Autonomy

    		 Group

    Tangibles in Action

    Abstracts in Action

    Task Expertise

    Multi-tasking

    Done!

    Done Well

    Line
    Balance 

    Circle
    Ego Protection

    Dispensable Ego

    Train

    Teach

    Stress Limits

    Stress Endurance

    Power Over  Change

    Adapt to Change

    Offensively Aggressive

    Defensively Aggressive

    Energy Restraint

    Energy Projection

     

    For women to come into their own, we have to start by embracing who we really are. We should be proud of who we are.  We are not weak, powerless or inferior in any way.  We just haven’t been taught how to apply our traits in the workplace.  That, I promise you, will change.

     

    Empowered Women Know Their Value!

     

  • How to Use the Rachel Letter To End Swamp Wars

    In the season 3 finale and the season 4 premier of Friends, Ross and Rachel decide to get back together.  But Rachel has one condition – she writes Ross a long letter in which she describes everything that went wrong with the relationship and Ross has to accept full responsibility.  Ross, anxious to get back together with Rachel lies and says he read the letter – twice – and agrees to everything in the letter.  As he learns what he agreed to he is unable to keep up the charade.  Ross finally comes clean and admits that he fell asleep reading the letter – it was 18 pages long – front and back!

    Women understand Rachel’s letter.  It is a pure pink female masterpiece – long, citing every incident no matter how trivial in exacting detail.

    Believe it or not our ability to write these types of letters comes in handy when working with men.  I have written several business “Rachel letters.”  It is one of the few times I get to venture towards the Pink end of the spectrum and frolic in my female characteristics with abandon.       (more…)

  • How To Seize Recognition As A Woman

    One of the biggest critiques we hear is that unlike our male colleagues, we don’t self-promote enough.  We are told we need to let our managers know what we accomplish because that is what our male colleagues do and unless we do what men do, we can’t compete with them.  But this advice like so much of what we are told doesn’t work for us.  Why?  Because we are not men!  Self-promoting in order to gain recognition is a male approach.  We need to gain recognition using a female approach! (more…)

  • The Cult of True Womanhood

    Did you ever wonder where all this “women are weak, timid and lack self-confidence” stuff came from?  We often think of the 1950’s and the visions of the idealistic stay at home mother in her apron and pearls but it actually goes back to the period from 1820 – 1860.  This was an age when the Cult of True Womanhood thrived. (more…)